Asian Games the big focus for Jyothi Yarraji: Coach James Hillier

Navi Mumbai: Back from a nasty ACL knee injury that sidelined her for the latter half of the 2025 season, 100m hurdler Jyothi Yarraji’s ‘big focus’ for this year will be the Asian Games, says her coach James Hillier.Speaking to reporters at the Jio Institute in Ulwe, Navi Mumbai, this week, Hillier, the Athletics Director at Reliance Foundation, provided a positive update on the two-time reigning Asian champion’s progress since her return to the track in January.“She’s just looked physically fantastic, stronger than she’s ever been. Her first proper track session back, she ran really unbelievably,” Hillier said.In a season that will build up to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow (July 23-Aug 2), followed by the Asian Games in Japan (Sept), Hillier struck a note of caution when asked about Yarraji’s return to competition.“I mean, Commonwealth Games is probably going to be a little bit tight, I think. We’re looking at possibly Fed Cup (May 22-25) as a good option, maybe one or two low-level meets before that.“The Asian Games are really the big focus for her. It’s now just getting some consistent training in and building that base up again.”Yarraji, the women’s 100m hurdles national record holder, suffered an ACL blow to her right knee during training last July and then underwent surgery, which ultimately saw her miss the World Championships in Tokyo later in the year.Praising the 26-year-old for the ‘positivity and maturity’ she had shown while dealing with her rehab, Hillier said Yarraji was on the right path and could even run some 100m flat races this year.“It’s looking quite good. I’m pretty optimistic that by the end of the year, she’ll be back to her best, maybe even go beyond that, to be honest.“She might do a few hundreds this year, it’s something we’ve talked about,” Hillier said.Injuries to Indian athletes has been a worrying recurring theme lately, with the country’s top long jumpers M Sreeshankar and Jeswin Aldrin both suffering setbacks. Javelin thrower Kishore Jena and men’s 110m hurdles national record holder Tejas Shirse, both part of the RF programme, haven’t been spared either. Hillier, a former British athlete and high-performance coach for British Athletics, put it down to several factors, starting with Indian children lacking the ‘broad base of a multi-sport background’.“I do see more injuries here than I experienced in the UK. I think schools play a massive part in that. I think the athletes don’t move well here.“There’s a huge challenge certainly in the big cities with space, so there’s nowhere to do sport,” Hillier said, adding: “There should be more focus on sport within the curriculum. That’s a big problem. When athletes come, they don’t necessarily move as well as they could, and if you’re not coordinated, you’re more susceptible to injuries.”Hillier also drew attention to athletes following ‘old Soviet influenced’ training methods that, he felt, were just not suited to the average Indian physique.“I see long jump coaches just constantly (making jumpers do) bounding and bounding. Long jump is a sprint with a jump at the end of it, and we don’t need to do all this. I believe you should train Indian long jumpers more like sprinters.“I’ve seen sprinters doing six-minute jogs, two-minute rest, then five-minute jogs,” Hillier said, recalling how he was once baffled at seeing a former Indian Olympic sprinter do 10k road runs. “It’s totally non-specific. One of the cornerstones of training theory is specificity.”